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Las Vegas Sands Widens Loss

Posted on November 12, 2009 at 10:09 - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link

During the quarter, the casino operator recorded a loss of $123 million, or 19 cents a share, compared with a pearl jewelry loss of $32.2 million, or 9 cents, in the year-ago period.

Excluding one-time items, Las Vegas Sands actually posted a profit of 3 cents a share, better than the penny loss analysts expected.

While revenue inched up 3% to $1.14 billion from $1.1 billion, it fell short of Wall Street's consensus of biwa pearl $1.17 billion.

Las Vegas Sands said it is seeing strength in its Macau units, which are on the block for an initial public offering.

The company also provided an update on its construction in Singapore, which it said is on track to open in the akoya pearl first quarter of 2010.

Shares of Sands gave up their earlier gains on the news, falling 3.2% in after-market action. Prior to the release the company ended the day up 12.1% to $14.76.

The jeweler significantly

Posted on November 12, 2009 at 10:09 - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link

The jeweler significantly widened its loss, hurt by charges related to store closures and sluggish same-store sales.

During the quarter, the pearl jewelry company recorded a loss of $89.8 million, or $2.81 per share, compared with a loss of $10 million, or 30 cents, in the year-ago period.

Excluding store closure charges of $70.8 million, or $2.22 a share, Zale actually lost 48 cents a share, beating Wall Street's estimates of a loss of $1.00.

Revenue sank 22% to $357.1 million from $456.2 million, while same-store sales plunged 21.2%.

While CEO Neal Goldberg admits that the biwa pearl company has had a difficult year, he says he expects to see an improvement after shuttering more than 200 under-performing stores and cutting other costs.

Still, the company did not provide guidance of the all-important holiday season.

Zale previously postponed reporting quarterly results after discovering it needed to review its accounting on akoya pearl prepaid advertising costs.

The jeweler said the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating these accounting issues, which sent shares plunging 21.6% to $5.01 in early afternoon trading.

-- Reported by Jeanine Poggi in New York

The weakness clearly

Posted on November 12, 2009 at 10:08 - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link

The weakness clearly derived from the larger of the company's two segments: cranes, where sales plunged 52% to $480 million from a year ago. Manitowoc attributed the pearl jewelry poor year-over-year comparison to the still-strong order book in the third period of 2008, before the economy fully took a nosedive after the financial crisis hit.

Though the company didn't provide specific guidance in the release, Manitowoc offered a rather underwhelming look ahead. In a statement, Chief Executive Glen Tellock said, "While improvement in the U.S. and European markets is not expected in the biwa pearl near term, there are pockets of growth in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East."

Midday Friday, shares of the company were trading at $9.21, down $1.24, or nearly 12%, on volume of 5.7 million shares. Average daily turnover is about 6.2 million shares.

Excluding items such as restructuring charges, Manitowoc said it lost $4.9 million, or 4 cents a share. Wall Street analysts were, on average, looking for a profit of 2 cents a share. Including the charges, the company's bottom line showed a loss of $17.7 million, or 14 cents a share. A year ago, it lost $26 million, or 20 cents a share.

Overall, revenue fell 20% to $882 million from a year ago.

The results were in contrast to other heavy-equipment makers, including the diversified giant Caterpillar(CAT Quote) and the mining-machinery specialist Bucyrus(BUCY Quote), both of which reported better-than-expected quarterly numbers. Manitowoc, however -- with its tower cranes, telescoping cranes, mobile hydraulc cranes and lattice-boom crawler cranes -- is more exposed to the akoya pearl still-devastated construction industry than many other names in the heavy-equipment sector.

And that's a good thing

Posted on November 12, 2009 at 10:08 - 0 Comments - Post Comment - Link

And that's a good thing, because what have decidedly not been boring are the volatile ups and downs in the pearl jewelry broader equities markets, driven by economic data reports that signal recovery one day and entrenched recession the next. Like everything else this week, especially commodities-related names, the shares of shipping companies have been violently whipsawed by investors.

DryShips(DRYS Quote), for biwa pearl instance, ended Friday by losing nearly 5% to close at $6.04. The loss erased a 5% jump in value on Thursday, which followed two straight sessions of sharp declines, when the stock surrendered nearly 13%.

Because dry-bulk shares are high beta, big moves in broader indices are magnified in the maritime names. Indeed, every dry-bulk stock moved in similar fashion this week, rocked by the heavy seas.

But back to earnings: This week, DryShips and Genco Shipping & Trading(GNK Quote) released quarterly results that surpassed Wall Street targets -- the akoya pearl former by 7 cents a share and the latter by 9 cents. Both appeared to benefit from interest expenses that came in at a lower rate than many had foreseen.

Otherwise, the results of both operators showed that year-over-year comparisons remain bleak, but that China's raw-materials buying binge, which spurred record imports of iron ore and other commodities all summer, stabilized the shipping industry's profits.